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There are two issues with this. There are also MASSIVE incentive issues with this (lobbying, etc) but in this comment I'll only discuss legal issues: The firs
by ZachPruckowski 12y ago
There are two issues with this. There are also MASSIVE incentive issues with this (lobbying, etc) but in this comment I'll only discuss legal issues:
The first is that a legislature can't easily bind its future self - laws passed by a majority can be repealed by a majority or circumvented by a majority in the future. So even if we pass Law 2014-003 saying what you said, there's nothing stopping a 2015 (or 2020 or whenever) law from saying "Law 2014-003 is hereby repealed" or more narrowly "Law 2014-003 doesn't apply to this law". There are some edge cases where you can pull it off but by and large it'd take a state/federal constitutional amendment.
The second issue is that the federal government can only regulate "interstate commerce". While you'd think that anything involving the Internet would automatically apply there, you couldn't stop a state law that covered only a local business dealing with in-state customers. So such a law could be used as a shield for Verizon/Comcast/etc while state laws restricting ISPs would only apply to smaller in-state competitors. My parents and a number of my friends are served by a local Wireless ISP because that's the only alternative in their neck of the (literal) woods. Under your system, their ISP could be subject to innumerable regulations that Verizon/Comcast would be immune to.